Sequential Tart has a nice roundup of what shoujo manga comics professionals are reading. The longest quote is from ElfQuest creator Wendy Pini, who opines that
Extroverted girls who fantasize about dating the captain of the football team are probably less likely to be attracted to the aesthetics of shojo manga than are the more introverted, thoughtful types who are enticed, rather than put off, by gender-bender fantasies.
The hottest book in my house these days is Yotsuba&!, by Kiyohoko Azuma, the creator of Azumanga Daioh. My kids absolutely love this book and still be heard laughing out loud at it, even on the third and fourth reading. I found the humor in Azumanga Daioh hovering somewhere between incomprehensible and nonexistent, but this book is a lot better, partly because Azuma dumps the four-panel format, partly because it’s just written and drawn better. The book is published by ADV but I can’t find a mention of it on their website.
The book opens with Yotsuba, a six-year-old girl, and her father arriving in a new town. We get no backstory, but Yotsuba is curiously unfamiliar with many of the elements of everyday life, and the humor is driven by her first-time encounters with such ordinary objects as swings, doorbells, and air conditioners. There is a good cast of sympathetic characters, and the artwork is clean and easy to follow.
Also being passed around my house at the moment are Tokyo Mew Mew A La Mode, which I have a lot of trouble warming up to; Gals!, and two Seven Seas titles, Amazing Agent Luna and Last Hope. Oh, and we finally got a copy of Shojo Beat. I’ll be reading all these and posting reviews to the main site soon, I hope.
Library Journal has a short article about manwha synergy. Three Korean companies, Sigongsa, Seoul Cultural Publishers and Haksan, are joining together to form Studio ICE, which will market Korean titles in the U.S. beginning in October. Titles will be in the shoujo and yaoi categories. I haven’t seen a lot of manwha, but increased diversity on the manga shelves would certainly be welcome.
TODAYonline, a Singapore newspaper, reports on an ad aimed at young people that uses manga-style art. Two comments: I haven’t seen this at all in the U.S.—lots of merchandise, but no manga-themed advertising. You’d think it would be a natural for a place like Limited Too. The other is that this kind of thing always reminds me of the scene in “Hard Day’s Night” where the Beatles are introduced to the girl who is supposed to be the trend setter, and they mock her. Ad agencies that try to co-opt youth culture are perpetually behind the hipness curve.
Brussels has the reputation of being the most boring city in Europe, but that may change with the opening of Nine City, envisioned by its planners as a combination comic book store, museum, creative space, and bar-restaurant. Part of the store opened on June 21, but the rest is still under construction. You can see more, and brush up on your French, here.
Back when I was a kid, we used to stop off on our way home from school at Gene’s Market. Gene was old and cranky and hated kids with a passion, especially kids that stopped off at his store after school to buy candy and comics. Glancing through your issue of Little Lulu before putting your 35 cents on the counter was sure to earn you a sharp reprimand.
All that came rushing back when I read David Welsh’s latest Flipped column at Comic World News. Apparently publishers are getting all bent out of shape over people who read manga in bookstores
without buying them.
Can this really be that big an issue? Who has time to stand around in a bookstore and read an entire manga?
Someone is taking this seriously, as Welsh reports (referencing this article in ICV2) that a Borders bookstore in San Francisco has taken to shrink-wrapping all its manga.
To which I say: Boo!
My kids spend hundreds of dollars a year on manga. No way am I going to let them buy anything in a store without flipping through it first.
We put up with Gene’s misanthropic attitude because he had the only store on our mile-and-a-half route home. But where there’s a Borders, there’s usually a Barnes & Noble not far away. Take note, grouchy booksellers!
(Thanks to Love Manga for alerting me to this Burning Issue of the Day!)
